chronicling general awkwardness through crafting, baking, and fashion

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It’s been almost two years, and I haven’t quite gotten used to cubicle life. There are still a lot of things I don’t understand.

Like, why does my 3 person cube that currently only holds 2 people require 6 trash cans? Why does my iPhone constantly go from 4 dots to no service when I don’t even move it, and why does it always seem to happen when Kesha comes on Pandora?

But the one thing I don’t understand is the food. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of food. Big fan. But when I’m spending 8 hours a day sitting down, I don’t exactly want an endless supply of junk food and baked goods being the only reason I get up.

I mean, yes, 27% of Americans think the moon walk was fake,we’re the only developed country not to offer paid maternity leave, we watch shows hosted by people who think vaccines cause autism and soccer fandom leads to moral decay, and we elect politicians who think breast implants improve your health and supporting a women’s right to choose is tantamount to satanism.

But hey, there’s nothing like a few crazies to make you feel well-educated and incredibly sane. Why else do people watch the Real Housewives (I’m looking at you Shannon Beador, ya crazy).

Things are finally settling down here; I passed my licensing exams for work and finished moving into my new apartment. At first I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t remember what people did when they weren’t studying or decorating. Luckily, the beginning of fall helped me realize there was more to life than sleeping in and Real Housewives marathons.

There are so many great things about fall. It’s the start of sweater and boots season and opens the door for pumpkin recipes to take over Pinterest. There is no better way to take in everything that fall has to offer than a picnic, and when that picnic takes place at a vineyard, well, you’re pretty much in pumpkin spice heaven.

Like this:

I’m currently on the plane back to baltimore, feeling like a baller because I can text people using iMessage while I’m soaring through the sky. I also got two free drink coupons, which may also have a little something to do with my ballerness. Did you know that you can’t use an iPad as a table because it will think a plastic cup of wine is your finger and start freaking out? Also, the first row on southwest flights do not have tray tables. Seriously slumming it here. Once I picked up my wine and my iPad calmed down, I looked through my pictures and realized that I forgot to blog about the only awesome thing I made before I left for my trip. After everyone abandoned me in Baltimore, I got pretty lazy with cooking and a little too free with the take-out. It’s pretty hard to convince myself to cook a healthy meal when there’s an iPhone app for sushi delivery. So last Monday, I had two boxes of food from my CSA and a flight booked to Austin on Wednesday. I had to do some serious eating. My first thought was to make a bunch of stuff and try to eat as much as possible before passing the leftovers off to my coworkers. But that seemed like a lot of work.

There’s a sad moment in every (full-time employed) post-grad’s life when you realize that you no longer get a summer. Instead of getting three months off, you have to plan of months ahead to get three days off.

That’s what I had to do in April, when I asked for special permission to get three days off to go visit Austin, Texas.

Obviously I will be blogging more about my trip, but I would just like to say that I have never been happier to be in the 106 degree heat than when I am not at work. Especially when my paycheck was direct deposited in to my bank account while I was designing a new necklace at the Kendra Scott color bar midday on a Thursday.

Like this:

I was at work today, casually reading National Geographic, and I found this article about what makes us human. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, it is cooking that sets us apart from apes, well some of us at least (I’m looking at you, you raw food crazies). Apparently, coking our food releases more nutrition; so we didn’t need to spend so much time gathering and chewing. It also allowed our brains to get bigger, or whatever.

So, when my mom was yelling at me to clean up while I was grilling this kick ass Rosemary Chicken, I was just increasing my intelligence. And, as I always suspected, cleaning is and will make you stupid.

But back to the kick assery of this chicken. With some kind of culinary magic, the rosemary, vinegar, honey, and mustard all come together to form my new favorite marinade. You would think one of the ingredients would overpower the others, but somehow that doesn’t happen. They all come together perfectly. I made this before the cross-fitter moved back to Texas, so I was able to get a second opinion on this marinade. He thought it was good. That may not sound like a glowing recommendation, but he doesn’t eat for taste, just calories. So any comment on how the food tastes means a lot.

Week one was actually last week. When people still lived here. But dont’t feel bad for me because my family and boyfriend abandoned me, I still have the dogs. You can feel bad for me when my mother takes the dogs with her after the Fourth of July, and she continues to refuse to let me get new puppies to fill this empty home. Apparently they have a problem with the whole house training thing and nobody being there to teach them not to destroy the house. This may be a valid point, but one of our dogs starts peeing uncontrollably when my dad catches him doing something bad. So, clearly, you can never really house train a dog, and I should be able to fill the house with little furry balls of canine cuteness.

I spent the last 10 weeks of my life studying for the Series 7, and it slowly killed my soul. The weekend before I finally took the exam, which happened to be the weekend of two of my best friends’ birthdays, I sat at home by myself and studied. When the instagrams of my friends having fun without me became too much to bear, I gave up reading about the code of arbitration procedures and popped open a bottle of cava. I don’t know if it was the wine, the defeating spirit of the 7, or my biological clock starting to click… but on this sad Friday night, I found myself crying during an episode of Say Yes to the Dress.